


The Ever After

by HardingHightown



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Post Game, Pre-Trespasser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:32:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5744005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-game, pre-trespasser. Blackwall is a name that doesn't fit, but he's not sure where to find a name that does. The knights in their stories get a happy ever after, but he is no knight.</p><p>There are people to face, old ghosts that need to be put to bed. So the man that once was Blackwall sets out to try and make what amends he can.</p><p>(posted from Tumblr after accidentally deleting it...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ever After

The name sticks in his throat every time he says it. The name of the man he was, the name he now has to make fit around broken parts and new additions. It sits fat in the middle of his tongue, filling up his mouth with a foul taste.

And yet it is his, and yes, she is right to say he must come to peace with using it again.

Some households slam the door in his face. Some welcome him with a punch, some with bitter silence, some with a sadness that holds in the air like woodfire smoke. Here, the feeling is different again. Eighteen months in and he is at the door of Edgar Marais, the youngest of his company, barely twenty when orders were given. It is a small house on the edge of Elmridge, barely big enough to be a spot on the landscape, run down to the point of being a ruin. When he knocks, it is not Edgar who answers.

He knows the woman, still handsome, though thinner than he remembers. A few years younger than him, with a fine strong nose and long flaxen hair. He does not expect kindness from her, or even for her to remember his face, but she does so in an instant, embracing him so hard that he can feel her cheekbones stab at his neck. When she stands to look at him, there are tears in her eyes, a sadness raising to the surface that cannot have been held down long.

When they settle around the firepit to eat, she tells him her only son is dead.

*

He remembers Edgar Marais as nervous, always nervous. When he had asked him why he’d signed up to fight, the answer had been simple- coin. His father had died drunk, leaving his mother and sister and a pile of debts. There was no glory, no fight in him, just the need to do right by his kin.

He had come to his command with a small sack of nothing- a scrap of a favour from a local girl, a crumpled up letter from his sister, a coin and crumbs of bread. Thom Rainier took him in and gave him his first taste of wine, and bought him his first girl. Edgar Marais had told him that he was who made him a man.

He had wept the most that day.

His mother talks plainly about the facts of it. An accident, she says, too much drink like his father then off out into the Avaar-filled woods. Too much drink makes a man lose sense. Too much drink makes a man make mistakes. Thom Rainier knows drink, knows men, and knows that a boy like Edgar doesn’t become bold in booze, just scared. Scared, and desperate, and lonely, but it wouldn’t do to say it now.

His eyes lock over the fire with the eyes of Elaine, barely four and twenty herself, and he knows that look, that knowing. She will keep the secret of her loss, the very particular loss of a person who has given up hope.

He wonders if Siba ever felt that way about him.

*  
He stays the night in with the horses, which feels right. Over his travels he’s stayed in inns, in caves, out in the stars and sometimes, rarely, under the roof of the people he’s wronged. Tonight there was an invitation, but he doubted it would be seen as fitting to stay in the house of two unattached women.

The stable is small, quite different to the stables at Skyhold. It fits just one nag, one built strongly for farm work. He lies in the hay above, listening to the soft huff of the beast beneath him. The smell takes him back to his home for almost a year. He remembers how much colder it was, out there in the mountains, how he had to cover himself with furs to stay warm. He remembers how it felt to have her sleeping naked beside him, how the sweat settled on her skin as they slept, how it became cold to the touch. He remembers the whimper as he left. He wonders how she felt this time, as he left her in Kirkwall.

Shifting to his side, he puts the thought behind him. It is a new life for her, away from the Inquisition. A life away from her criminal past. If he is to belong to it, he will need to belong as himself.

He cannot sleep.

*

In the morning he starts to fix a patch on the roof. Mrs Marais tries to tell him he needn’t bother, but it feels right to do it. It’s an easy job, but not one for her or her daughter.

Elaine watches him for most of the morning, and fetches him water when he thirsts.

*

In the evening he joins them again. Mrs Marais serves up hare stew, and this time she asks about his life since Orlais.

It is strange to talk on the Inquisition. Part of him assumes that the news would have travelled, that the world and his wife would know of the great Inquisitor Cadash, but he knows deep down that the world doesn’t work like that. There is a tear in the sky and there are demons on the ground and then there isn’t, and life goes on. The nag ploughs the field, the bread is baked, and the small people of Thedas carry on as they always did. He tells them of the great sacrifices, of the company of Elves and Qunari and Dwarves, mercenaries and mages and the Divine’s own agents. He tells them of the new Divine, and what she plans to do for the world. Elaine is enraptured, her big eyes shining in the light.

Talking of Siba reminds him of how they parted. He wishes he’d been able to look at her, but the tone of her voice cut into him deeply. The way she’d told him she always knew he’d leave her again… it made him more determined to come back, and come back a better man than he’d left.

After dinner, Mrs Marais steps outside with him to fetch water. They walk together slowly, and she takes his arm for warmth, the pale swaying with each step.

She asks him if he remembers first meeting her, and he tells her he does. It was a surprise, that is his first thought upon recalling it; Marais had invited his mother to the barracks to meet the man who had saved the family from devastation. He had been drunk, certainly, halfway through a hand of cards and drinking port from the bottle. He remembered thinking she was handsome enough, that he might fuck her before she left. He can’t remember why he didn’t.

You’re a better man now than you were then, she tells him as they reach the well. She smiles at him as she hooks on the pale to the rope to lower. A far better man.

He apologises for not being better, apologises for the hundredth time for his arrogance. She kisses him on the cheek, and tells him to stop calling her Mrs Marais. Her name is Cleo.

When she tells him, he remembers.

*

There is always more to do, he finds. The horse needs new shoes and he can save them the money the smithy would take. There are possessions too heavy that can be sold at market. A week turns to two, and he finds himself accompanying Elaine up the hill away from the house. He knows she can do it for herself, he knows he is not needed, and yet Cleo keeps him busy.

He carries the wheat for the miller on his shoulders as Elaine leads the way. They do not talk much. The weeks have sapped away the need for sound to fill the void. Instead they walk together, two of her dainty steps to one of his broad strides. The birds are singing in the Spring.

When they reach the mill, the miller takes the grain for a pittance. He is a mealy man, thinner than any man of the land should be. With some persuasion, he is convinced to give two bits more per bushel, on account of the quality of the grain and the situation of the women. He hands the money to Elaine directly, and Thom notices his fingers linger on her palm.

As they walk back, he asks her why she is not married. Looking to the ground, she tells him that soon she supposes she will be.

*

For the first time since he left, he does not send a letter to Kirkwall. He wonders if Siba will even notice.

*

He fishes for supper sometimes, set up by the lake as it thaws in the Spring. Cleo brings him bread and apples, and her fingers linger on his palm.

*

On his nameday, Cleo hands him a homemade pie wrapped in fine fabric, and they drink a bottle of whiskey together. Her laugher is light and her eyes sparkle. He laughs too. He doesn’t think he’s laughed so truly since he last saw Sera. She twists her wedding ring around her finger as she tells him she is grateful he took the time to make amends. His own wedding ring sits around his neck. He is suddenly very aware of it.

On his nameday, he takes off his wedding ring and puts it in his pouch for safekeeping. He takes his knife and cuts away his long hair, leaving it shorter. He shrugs away part of the past he doesn’t need anymore. Blackwall is not a name that fits in the same way. It is not needed now. He is finding more of himself every day. He wonders who is responsible for that feeling.

On his nameday, he wonders if Siba has even accepted his letters. He wonders if she has anybody to read them to her in Kirkwall. He wonders if she even thinks on him now she is part of the Merchant’s Guild, whether she has time for memories of an old criminal when she’s going straight. He wonders if they married too soon, barely out of battle, half out of stubbornness and half out of lust. He wonders if she thinks the same.

On the hour after his nameday, in the dead of the night, Elaine kisses him.

*

Her kiss is soft and hesitant, and almost not enough to wake him. It is the heat of her breath on his lips that does it in the end. He wakes to see her eyes shining above him, her long brown hair falling over her shoulders. She is wrapped in a woolen shawl and nothing else.

He goes to speak, but her lip starts to shake and he finds himself instead pulling her towards him. She grips on to him, her face buried in his neck as she cries silently, shaking from the effort of it. He wonders if she’s ever let herself cry in front of her mother. 

When she pulls away, he knows he should send her on her way. His shoulder is damp from her tears, her face is red, and she is so young, so very young… but there is whiskey in his belly and her skin is soft and supple and full of promise and he finds himself leaning in to kiss her collarbone. Her body is all softness, she is all softness, full and smooth and unmarked. She shudders underneath him as his tongue laps at her breasts and he wonders if she’s ever even come before. She whispers his name over and over, Thom, yes Thom, Thom I want you.

The name is unsullied in her innocent mouth.

When he pushes away her arms, she looks so hurt it breaks his heart, and when he takes his mouth down to her cunt she blushes all over, covering her face with her arms. She tastes strong and it drives him forward as he licks and sucks and she comes with a shudder in moments. It all seems so easy. So right. So simple.

She sits up, and pulls him to her.

He could stop now, he knows that. He should stop. He has given her what she needed. He has taken all he should, but he can feel the heat from her as she spreads herself wide for him. He thinks back to his first time, much younger than she is now, fumbling in the skirts of the Fishwife whilst her husband was at market. He hopes she’ll carry better memories as he enters her.

Slowly, softly, that’s how he wants it, and he wants it so desperately. Her eyes are shining a brighter blue in the light shining through the rafters, and though there are the remnants of tears what strikes him is the feeling of trust. He could marry this girl, he thinks as he thrusts into her fully. He could disappear into the countryside of Thedas and marry this girl. He could raise their human children. He could take the wheat to the miller and see his jealousy daily. He would know the whole village would envy his lot.

The noises she makes are soft and hot against his ear as she moves to the rhythm he sets, as she places all of herself in his trust. She is his, and he feels stronger for it. He thrusts harder, and she moans softly in his ear, and his hands grip at her soft hips and full breasts and without warning he spends in her.

He expects to feel the cold hit of shame straight after.

He does not.

*

Four more nights. Four more meals. For more visits from Elaine in the dead of night. He waits for the guilt. He waits and waits but it doesn’t come.

*

In the end, it is an apple that changes things. Another day’s fishing. Another meal given to him by Cleo, wrapped in muslin. Bread and an apple, this time a Wycombe Pippin.

The taste of it brings back the day in seconds. The day he sat by the canal in Markham. The day he asked Siba to marry him, and she had said no.

She had said no to the version of marriage he’d proposed. She had said no to a small house, to a family, to a dog and carvings and baked bread and markets. She had said no to that life he had stolen into here, but what she had promised him was something far greater. She had promised to love him as he was. All the faults. All the lies. All the dirt under his fingernails. She had promised to love all parts of the man he was, and cut an apple with him, feeding him a slice and kissing the juice from his lips.

Here, he is an idea. There, he was a man.

*

The fifth night, he steals away under a new moon. This time, he leaves no note.


End file.
